How
can people live together peacefully, especially in a multicultural,
multi-religious society? We should find a minimum level of consensus
which is needed to live peacefully together in an open (world)
society and a moral language to communicate with each other. Dutch
philosopher Paul Cliteur published his book Moral Esperanto (this
book is in Dutch and has not yet been translated) in 2007 in which he
argues that it is important that people can communicate with each
other in a moral and political language which is in principle
understandable to everybody; in contrast with religious discourse
which only makes sense to believers. Cliteur makes the analogy of
Esperanto, the artificial language proposed to be the lingua franca,
and emphasizes the need for a universal moral language.

A moral Esperanto has minimally two requirements. On the political
level, Cliteur argues that the state should be neutral: the state
should not in any way support religion. Cliteur pleads for the French
model of secularism (laicite), instead of the Dutch model of
religious pluralism. Religion should not be privileged. On the moral
level, Cliteur argues that morality cannot and should not be grounded
in religion. If people have to live together in one country and on
one planet, then they have to have consensus about some fundamental
issues. They have to speak a moral Esperanto.

I
propose to outline such a moral Esperanto which aspires to be a
universal moral theory. I call this: Universal Subjectivism.
Universal Subjectivism is, like Esperanto, an artificial moral
construction. I do not think that Universal subjectivism is a panacea
for all moral problems. However, the suffering caused by human beings
living together can be much lessened. Universal Subjectivism can
reduce the suffering of humankind and hopefully all sentient beings.
That is the ambition of Universal Subjectivism. Universal
Subjectivism is based on combining the political theory of John
Rawls' A Theory of Justice with the applied ethics of oo Peter
Singer, as for example in his book Practical Ethics, whilst taking a
secular humanist stance, which has been stated clearly for example by
Paul Kurtz in Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism.

Moral
philosophy should search for blind spots in morality. Every society
has its own traditions, moral codes and customs. Moral philosophy and
ethics should find any blind spots in them and try to find ways to
overcome them. Moral philosophy should try to reduce suffering and
improve the human condition. It should be a method to make the world
a better place. How to do that? Perhaps like this:

A Moral Thought Experiment

Imagine
you are miraculously lifted up from your existence on planet Earth
and you can look at the world from 'the point of view of the
universe'. From this position you c know you will go back to Earth,
but you do not know what (U kind of being, capable of suffering, you
will become. You can be 'born' in any possible form of existence.
What you can do is create the institutions, laws, rules, customs of
the world in which you know you are going to be 'born'. You are the
lawgiver. You are in the Original Position, a position from which you
have to decide what the institutions and laws will be like. From here
you look at the world through a 'veil of ignorance': you do not know
what your position will be in the world. You do not know if you are a
woman or a man, you do not know in what shape your body is, you do
not know the color of your skin, you do not know your sexual
preferences, you do not know where you will be on the planet. You
could be in any of these positions.

Worst-Off Positions

For
example, imagine yourself being born into the world physically
handicapped. You find yourself in a world with institutions, which
you yourself from 'up there' had invented, but there are no ramps to
get into malls, shops, and buildings. For you in a wheelchair this
is a serious problem. However, there could be a world in which this
problem was solved by the availability of wheelchair ramps.
Therefore - hypothetically - you go back up there, change the
institutions to include ramps, and go down again. You cannot exclude
the possibility of ending up in a wheelchair, because there are
people in the world who are physically disabled. Hypothetically it
could have been you. What you can do is to try to help society
accommodate as best as possible the needs of the physically
disabled. In a utopia one could imagine no people being disabled,
but that's not how reality is. The second best option - optimizing
the conditions and accepting the contingencies of fate - is the most
rational thing to do.

This
time you find yourself as a woman. More specific, you find yourself
as a woman in a misogynist society, like Saudi Arabia. You probably
want to get out of this position as soon as possible and change the
conditions again in order that no society will oppress women.

Imagine
yourself being born into a deeply religious family who take religion
very seriously and impose the dogma's, traditions, taboosand
customs on you, whether you like it or not. According to Islam
scholar and critic Ibn Warraq no one could freely and rationally
want to be a Muslim, especially when you are a woman. If you - from
behind the veil of ignorance - would want to exclude positions in
which there is religious indoctrination, then this tells us that
there is something deeply wrong with parents and teachers trying to
impose a particular religion upon a child. If you think this is over
the top, then imagine yourself really to be born in a fanatical
(fundamental) religious position and imagine you yourself to be
someone who happens to hate this religiousenvironment without
escape routes. Or imagine yourself being a homosexual, a woman, an
apostate, a libertine, a freethinker et cetera,being stuck in a
fundamental religious socialsetting.

You
happen to enter the world as a homosexual, but you 'created' a
society in which homosexuality is forbidden and socially disapproved
of. It is not somebody else, but it is you who happens to be a
homosexual. It is about a one in ten chance that you are a
homosexual. Society therefore should not discriminate against
homosexuals. The denial of one's emotional and sexual flowering as a
person does have severe consequences for psychological wellbeing and
happiness. For die-hard homophobes this thought experiment will be
difficult because they will have to imagine themselves to be a
homosexual.One should also include in the thought experiment the
option that you yourself happen to be a fervent anti-homosexual for
whom it is not seen as a problem that homosexuality is forbidden.
However, it is those who discriminate against homosexuals who
interfere with the life of homosexuals, not the other way around.
The homo-discriminator will probably reply that he is personally
deeply offended by the homosexuality of others. In liberal theory
that's just how it is: you might be upset, offended and grieved by
how others behave, but as long as they do not directly interfere
with your behavior, you will have to cope, and be grieved and
offended. Just like Muslims will have to cope with cartoons and
critique which they find offensive. This is what the Virtual Museum
of Offensive Art is about.

You
are born and you see the world through the eyes of a cow. This cow
is confined to harsh and cruel conditions in factory farming. It
might stretch the imagination to think of yourself as a cow, but it
makes moral sense, because cows too have an ability to suffer and
the ability to suffer is what makes an entity fit for moral concern.
I am not sure if I can vividly imagine what it is like to be a cow,
but I can imagine the difference of being a cow in a lush meadow and
a cow in a dark confinement. So you probably go back and change the
world into a world without factory farming. And I can also try to
imagine what it would be to be a dolphin that is entangled in a
fishing net and fighting for its life thereby breaking its nose. If
I were a dolphin, I would want to have fishing methods that would
leave me, and whales for that matter, alone.

Now
take into account future generations: there are more people in the
future than there are now. Imagine being born into the future, on a
barren planet. The chances of being what you are here and now in
this comparably privileged position are tiny.

In
the previous example I spoke as if there were a future, but if we do
'business as usual' we will experience the human-made Apocalypse
sooner or later. In order to think about what a (just) future
society would look like, there has to be a future to humankind on
this earth. You can't share a pie when there isn't one. The problem
of sustainability and theexponential growth rate of the
population of human beings ensure that the we will ruin the planet.
So, all moral and political thinking should have as top priority
thinking about the future of humanity and the sustainability of the
planet. Would you want to live in a world with 6 billion people or
would you want to live in a world with 16 billion people or more? In
the case of a scenario of 16 billion people, the pressure on the
environment will be immense and there is a limit to what the planet
can sustain.

[Digression:
The Titanic. I do think that it is five to twelve and we should do
our utmost best to prevent what happened to the people at Easter
Island, who ruined their island by chopping down all the trees.
Abortion, euthanasia, Intelligent Design, the scientific
investigation of religion and other paranormal phenomena are all
important, but of secondary importance. Let me compare the situation
of humankind at this moment with the people feasting aboard the
Titanic before it hit the iceberg. Of course, it was important that
nobody stole jewelry or was being killed aboard. But much more
important was what happened to the ship as a whole. The difference is
that the captain of the Titanic did not see the iceberg, but we do.
We see our ship cruising towards the iceberg, but we are more
concerned about business as usual on board and continue to live our
lives, hoping that someone will change the course so that we will
pass the iceberg.]

The
model of what I call Universal Subjectivism is a procedure one can do
oneself at any time. To do this rationally one should consider the
worst possible positions, the so-called 'worst-off' position. It is
irrational to maximize positions, which are already good at the
expense of those in a worse off position. Taking into account the
chances of these positions, it is not rational to bet on ending up
wealthy and therefore maximizing this position. What is rational is
to try optimizing the worst-off position, whatever that may be.
Ideologically this is what the welfare state is about: the state
tries to make life better for those worst-off in society, no matter
the reason of their predicament.

The
procedure is that one should pick one's 'favorite' worst-off
position, go hypothetically behind the veil of ignorance and change
the world as one thinks optimizes the conditions for this particular
worst-off position. Then, one descends mentally, imagines how it
works and adjusts if one thinks it can be better. Universal
Subjectivism is a dynamic process of mentally jumping into different
existential possibilities. Universal Subjectivism is a mental moral
journey.

Subjective,
but Universal

Universal
Subjectivism is universal because the model can be applied to
everybody equally. It is subjective, because it is you and your
feelings and emotions, who decide - when hypothetically switched to a
different existence - what could and should be changed in society and
institutions in order to make life more bearable and, hopefully,
enjoyable. It is you yourself who has to imagine oneself in all these
different, worst-off, positions. The paradox is that although it is a
subjective model, the outcome, though not objective, is universal
(all rational individuals would want the same in the same worst-off
position). It is not relativistic.

There
are two ways to use this model. In the first place, individuals can
use it for themselves as an ethical tool. When confronted with a
moral problem, you mentally change positions with the others
concerned and imagine yourself in that position. Can you rationally
want yourself in that position?

On
the other hand, there is the social and political level. This model
can be used to test how just a particular society is, and change it
for the better. Universal Subjectivism tries to maximize the freedom
of the individual, not the group, because it is always imaginable
that some people in the group do not want what the group O wants.
Therefore, the State should guarantee maximum freedom for the
individual. However, even maximum freedom has limits. Individual
freedom cannot intrude the freedom of other individuals. Individuals
should not limit on the freedom of other individuals; only if there
are strong reasons to do so, like compulsory education.
Paradoxically, education is interchangeable: most adults agree that
their parents were right in insisting they go to school.

In
order to evaluate and judge a society morally, one should look how it
is to be in the worst-off position in that particular society. You
can use the following checklist: what would be my social position in
that society if I were: a women, a homosexual, a different race,
mentally or physically handicapped, unemployed, nonbeliever,
apostate, transsexual, prostitute, a libertine,democrat, a farm
animal, belonging to an ethnic minority, a critic of the government,
an inmate, a journalist, or a political activist. The Amnesty
International Yearbook can be used as a moral indicator of the moral
condition of a country. Many societies are, what I call, 'victim
society': groups of individuals are systematically placed in a
worst-off position. We should try to expand the circle of morality as
wide as possible and prevent that there are victims. Universal
Subjectivism is a tool to help to check if there are victims.

The
idea of interchangeability, that is the contingency of any existence,
limits the domain of possible options. The axiom on which the theory
rests is that you cannot rationally want to be in a worst-off
position, or, in other words, you cannot rationally want to be
tortured (even for a masochist there are kinds of torture where the
'fun' stops). When there are victims, interchangeability is
irrational and self-destructive. Of course most people are not
rational, or at least not all the time. But within the 'moral game'
of doing the model of Universal Subjectivism, people are assumed to
be rational. In order to test a particular position, look for the
possibility of interchangeability.

Expanding Rawls' A Theory of Justice

Universal
Subjectivism is a hypothetical social contract theory based on Rawls
version of the social contract by making people decide on the social
and political parameters of society without them knowing what they
will be in that society. In the Original Position people who make the
choices look through a veil of ignorance at the society: they do not
know what and who they will be in that society. Rawls limits the
domain of his theory in two ways: 1. Rawls takes rational, or
potential rational persons into account (thus not taking non-human
animals into account for example) and 2. Rawls limits himself to a
single nation. However, the broadening of the Rawlsian idea of
deliberation in the Original Position from behind a thick veil of
ignorance does make expansions possible. Rawls does not seem to use
the potential power of his idea because he incorporates a (Kantian)
notion of the essence of a human being. When one leaves these notions
behind and instead focuses on the ability to suffer, plus
universalizability of each sentient being, the theoretical problems
disappear, but pragmatic problems appear.

Why Be Moral?

But
why be moral? Why should anyone bother to do this thought experiment?
Well, because hypothetically it could be you in any of those
worst-off positions. Of course many people do not care at all about
the moral irrelevance of their fortunate existence and are unwilling
to consider giving up any privileges. Not being willing to apply this
model, is the end (or at least a severe limitation) of moral
discourse. It is a personal choice whether or not you want to be
involved in (this) moral discourse. It is a choice anyone can and has
to make.

Education,
more specifically moral education, is pivotal. It is important to be
able to imagine oneself to be in the O position of someone else. What
else can do this better than the study of literature? When you read a
novel you see the world through the eyes of some character. You see
and experience what the world looks like from the perspective of
another human being. If you are able to do this yourself, you are
able to play the game and see the world from different perspectives.

Education
should be free and open, not closed and unfree. Education should be
secular and scientific: would you want yourself to be taught
falsehoods (like 'evolution is just a theory') and guild ridden by
taboos? I do think that the kind of education that people would
create for themselves from behind the veil of ignorance is a kind of
liberal democratic, science based, open education. An open and free
education ensures that each individual has maximum possibilities to
choose how to live for him or herself.

Seeing
the world from a different perspective is one thing, the next thing
is to have empathy: to feel the emotions. In Universal Subjectivism
you do not have to have sympathy with the fate of somebody else, but
only with your own fate, which could be anything. In order to prepare
yourself for the worst-off positions you have to have empathy. You
have to have sympathy only for yourself.

I
conclude that Universal Subjectivism is a usueful tool to overcome
moral blind spots. So, imagine what it is like to be in a worst-off
position. Doing that means you take the moral weight of contingency
seriously.

Floris
van den Berg is a philosopher at Utrecht University and Executive
Director of Center for Inquiry Low Countries (www.cfilowcountries.
org).